Grow Your SEG Base With LinkedIn

I’ve never come across a credit union marketing or business development professional that I didn’t like at some level.

Why?

Credit Union people are just friendly. They care about their members and their community. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be working at a credit union, they’d be at a bank. (while that was meant as a joke, we all know it is true to some level)

YOU AREN'T THE ONLY ONE
Third Degree hears from many credit union marketers and business development officers asking for help with increasing their community charter opportunities and SEG base. We don’t have to tell you why this is so important for credit unions. Your charter is your current and potential membership base. The more members you have, the more you grow and the more you are able to help your members and in turn, your community. And that’s what being a credit union is all about. People. Community.

GET CREATIVE
While we believe that telling your story in a unique and compelling way with inspiring materials is the best way to show you are a great organization worth supporting and joining, there are other ways that can support your brand, products and services while helping you reach your goals.

YOU ARE POWERFUL PEOPLE, PEOPLE
Before we go into the “what’s” and “how’s” let’s get something out on the table: credit union people are humble and they have a hard time tooting their own horn. (just ask @CU_Cheerleader, Amy Lawrence) Credit union professionals  struggle with touting the “credit union difference” to the audiences they would like to reach. Third Degree helps credit unions with this every day by developing strategic campaigns targeted to not only increasing that membership base but share of wallet as well. And we’ve seen our credit union clients experience great success. But I’m not here to talk about us. I want to talk about you.

LINK TO POTENTIAL GROWTH
A great, easy additional tool to help increase your SEG base is social net-working. Specifically, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is growing by leaps and bounds more and more each day and is becoming a utilized resource among business professionals. Many of you are probably already on LinkedIn and that’s great. But are you utilizing it to achieve your credit union’s goals? Are you using LinkedIn to help grow your SEG base? You should be and we’re going to show you how!

Your Credit Union and Twitter: A Little Goes A Long Way

MAMA ALWAYS SAID...
Thank your followers. Maybe it is because I was raised in the south where we send thank you cards and say thank you for everything but I believe a thank you says a lot more than just “thank you.” A thank you to a credit union member or potential credit union member says that your credit union cares. Does that sound cliché? Of course. Is it true? Yes. Everyone wants to know that someone cares for them and part of your core values as a credit union says that you do, so here is an opportunity to live it out. When people follow your credit union on twitter, send a personal message and thank them for the follow! Don’t have an automated message, since most people consider that spam. (just think of the “golden rule” here)  When a follower re-tweets something you tweeted more than just once or twice, thank them. This is another opportunity to set your credit union apart from the big banks. Big banks are too busy to send a personalized thank you note, so credit unions have an opportunity here to step in and show just how personable and customer-service oriented they can be.

ON THE CLOCK
Have a schedule for your staff. You probably don’t have a full time person hired to just take care of social media for your credit union, do you? Didn’t think so. Neither do we. Designate 2-4 staff members to do your credit union’s tweeting at certain times of the day. It might be a good idea to assign them topics to tweet about. Have a front line staff tweet about the drive through line, your business development officer tweeting about community events and opportunities, the marketing director can tweet about new campaigns, etc… I’m sure you get the idea.

TWEET THIS
Have twitter guidelines Since you will likely have several people tweeting for you on your account, establish social media and twitter guidelines for your credit union marketing team. These guidelines should talk about when to tweet, what to tweet about and how to respond to both negative and positive @ mentions. Check out some of these social media guidelines for examples.